Tiny thought: Dead truths

I define a dead truth as something you used to believe but no longer do. Some of these truths are banal (e.g. knee high boots suck) and thus slip away seamlessly, vanishing into a graveyard of feelings or ideas overturned. But some of them are much more systemic. Some of these beliefs are so tied to one’s sense of self that they have organized elements of their identity around them, turning them into characteristics that define them instead of simply some things they believe.

This doesn’t mean that they (the truths) are less likely to die, only that when they do, it is harder to move on from them. Getting up from the shiva is more painful, to use a Jewish analogy, than sitting down for it at all.

The thing that’s so tough about these dead truths is that what emerges in their place takes a while to integrate. The fluid matter shatters frameworks and disorients routines, even ones that still work — that are still essential — and that could make the ground that’s under them seem kind of like it isn’t there. But holding on to whatever ground came before the death, trying to proceed in the old way while dressed in a recently new way seems actually to make simple things you still need or enjoy unpleasant at best, impossible to tolerate at worst.

I guess my whole point here is really a reminder that truths die. That when they do, they don’t come back alive. Unless they do, in which case they were never actually dead. So sit shiva, absolutely — but get up when it’s time.

We’re still alive, you know?